Federal prosecutors opened their case against Hadi Matar in Buffalo, New York, on July 22, 2026, in a terrorism trial tied to the 2022 stabbing of author Salman Rushdie. Matar is already serving a 25-year state prison sentence after a New York jury found him guilty last year of attempted murder and assault.
The supplied AP and Guardian reports say the federal case focuses on motive rather than the mechanics of the attack. Prosecutors allege Matar acted to carry out the 1989 fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for Rushdie's death after publication of The Satanic Verses. They also say he was influenced by Iran and Hezbollah. Matar has pleaded not guilty.
According to the AP, jurors were shown video of the attack and heard prosecutors say Matar spent years researching Rushdie's whereabouts before attacking him on a lecture stage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. The report says the assault left Rushdie blind in one eye and nearly killed him. The Guardian adds that the writer was stabbed more than a dozen times and is expected to testify again in the federal case.
The reports also say the trial began about 70 miles from the venue where Rushdie had been due to speak in August 2022. The AP said defense attorney Nathaniel Barone urged jurors to focus on what Matar intended and argued that prosecutors must infer his state of mind from circumstantial evidence. The Guardian likewise noted that the central question is whether Matar was acting on Khomeini's fatwa.
Both reports say Matar is a dual U.S.-Lebanese citizen, born in the United States to parents who immigrated from Lebanon. The supplied evidence also says investigators found photographs of Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Matar's New Jersey bedroom, along with material described as supportive of Hezbollah and notes suggesting he had searched for Rushdie online.
The available reporting does not establish every allegation as fact. It does, however, support a narrow account: the federal government has brought a second case against Matar, this time focused on terrorism charges and on whether the 2022 attack was motivated by extremist allegiance. The trial was expected to last about two weeks and could end with a life sentence if jurors convict him on the federal counts.
That framing matters because the federal case is not about whether the stabbing happened. It is about why it happened and whether the government can prove an ideological or organizational purpose behind it. The supplied reports show prosecutors leaning heavily on prior writings, found images and the chronology of Matar’s research. The defense, by contrast, is challenging the leap from those materials to intent.
